“Cock, aim,” Kyle spoke and pointed his bb gun into the forest, in the direction of the destruction. His hands moved automatically, priming the bb gun for shooting in less than two seconds. If he was manually doing, it would have definitely been slower, but using his skills made him fast.

The forest was too dark to see anything, and Kyle could only hear the crashing of branches. However, as the crashing sounds got closer, they also got slower, and soon stopped altogether.

Through the thicket of bushes and vines, Kyle saw the glowing yellow eyes of an enormous beast staring back at him. The eyes were each larger than a quarter and several inches apart. Whatever beast they belonged to must have a huge head and body, with a strength capable of ripping Kyle to shreds.

Kyle thought back to the quest he looked at a few moments ago. The first on the list, kill a wandering southern grayridge, could be the description of his current encounter, and what he’d need the force the outcome to be.

Kyle and the beast already met eyes, and there was no escaping. Based on the second quest in the list, Kyle could guess that the beast was hungry, since it left its home. The southern grayridge had the quest to find food, and Kyle had the quest to kill the southern grayridge.

The southern grayridge would wait until Kyle turned his back or approached too closely, but that allowed Kyle to shoot his bb gun at the beast’s eye, puncturing it. He immediately followed up with the Cock skill and dodged the beast as it leaped toward him.

The beast roared and rammed into the cliff behind where Kyle once stood, and its eye bled profusely. The giant, wolf-like creature snarled in Kyle’s direction, and he shot it again. Kyle’s second shot didn’t hit anywhere vulnerable on the beast’s body, and simply enraged it.

The beast jumped forward and pounced on Kyle, knocking him to the ground. The beast clawed at Kyle’s chest, and Kyle thrust his bb gun forward, trying to push the beast off him.

You have learned the active skill Push.

You have learned the active skill Thrust.

You have learned the auxiliary skill Claw Resistance.

Kyle activated his newly acquired skills, comboing them to effectively push the southern grayridge off his body. He quickly used his Shoot skill, which combined cocking, aiming, and pulling the trigger into one skill, and shot another bb at the beast’s face. Again, the shot did little-to-nothing against the beast.

Kyle’s skill rapidly gained levels as he snuck in three more shots at the beast, one bb going through its last remaining good eye.

You have learned the active skill Eye-Shot.

Kyle didn’t let any time go to waste and dodged another leap from the beast, which had both eyes destroyed and couldn’t see anything in front of it. Kyle activated his skills continuously, shooting the beast with a barrage of bbs. Heedless to the tiny balls of steel being shot at it, the beast turned to Kyle’s general direction and charged.

As expected, however, the beast missed, and Kyle ran backward, using his Run skill to fluidly navigate without looking. While he backed up, he continued to shoot, gradually wearing down the southern grayridge’s will to fight until it retreated back into the forest.

But Kyle couldn’t stop there. His quest was to kill the southern grayridge, not just to wound it. However, Kyle didn’t have a way to kill the southern grayridge; his bb gun would never be powerful enough to pierce its skin and bones.

He looked around for something else to use as a weapon and settled his eyes on a large rock. The rock, a little smaller than Kyle’s head, could be broken into smaller fragments and used as a knife. Kyle picked up the rock and threw it down against a larger rock, causing it to break into several fragments.

Most of the fragments were too small to be used for anything, and the large fragments didn’t have any good edges. While Kyle had failed to turn the ordinary rock into a piercing weapon, he plenty of rocks around him to use as materials. It would only be a matter of time until he had his razor sharp rock.

Not too far from Kyle, the blinded southern grayridge plowed through the underbrush and occasionally hit trees. Its large body had a hard time maneuvering around bushes and vines even when it had working eyes. Without its eyes, the southern grayridge couldn’t prevent itself from running into trees.

The aged southern grayridge had lived a long life - almost a decade - and had never been put in such a precarious situation. If it were with its pack, it could use its nose to follow the rest of its kin. However, by itself, it could only stumble around the forest and distance itself from the entity it encountered.

In front of the beast, a thick vine grew across a fallen branch. On that vine, hundreds of thorns pointed upward with razor-sharp points. When the southern grayridge stepped into the fallen branch, it didn’t hit any of the thorns, but when it stepped on top of the branch to prepare itself for jumping over, its paws were impaled by the thorns.

The southern grayridge whimpered, and Kyle followed it. He used a newly acquired skill, Track, to follow the southern grayridge with his map. When he used his skill, a line of red dots formed on his map, leading him toward whatever he was tracking. He couldn’t automatically move there, because the area wasn’t explored yet, and Kyle manually walked toward his target.

Vines and bushes grew dense in the forest, and Kyle used the barrel of his bb gun to push foliage out of his way while he walked. He needed to buy a set of sheers when the next shop day came, then he could start clearing pathways through the forest, but Kyle didn’t let thoughts like that distract him. He had a sharp rock in his pocket and needed to kill the injured southern grayridge.

The southern grayridge fell backward after having its front paws impaled. It could barely think - after having rammed its head into so many trees - and laid on the forest floor, ready for death to take it. The beast had lived a long time and fathered many children; he only hoped his pack would find a suitable location for their new den.

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But, when Kyle entered within ten feet of it and his scent drifted into its nose, the southern grayridge stood back up; Its survival instincts wouldn’t let it die from just a few puncture wounds on its face.

“Eye-Shot,” Kyle spoke. He gave away his position, and the southern grayridge looked directly at him, ready to pounce, but Kyle used his skill to shoot the southern grayridge in its left eye.

Then, he fired again. And again. Kyle shot three times in rapid succession, putting a steel bb into the southern grayridge’s eye socket each time.

Kyle walked closer to the southern grayridge while staying alert for any sudden movements. He cocked his bb gun and held it in one hand while he pulled the stone from his pocket. He had shattered a much larger stone into many smaller pieces, making the one that was in his hand. It had a sharp side and a round side, making it easy to hold and cut with.

Kyle didn’t have any experience in killing, but he had a general idea of how it was done. He held his bb gun in one hand and prepare to strike down with the stone in his other hand. If he really needed to, he could use his bb gun as a melee weapon, but he didn’t want to put any additional stress on its components. It still worked, but it was covered in scratches. It might not survive Kyle using it as a club.

Just when Kyle was about the bash the southern grayridge’s head with his stone, the beast jerked its head and bit in Kyle’s direction. The bite missed, but it caused Kyle to stumbled backward and shoot his bb gun at the southern grayridge’s mouth.

The southern grayridge, pulling on every last bit of strength from its muscles, jumped at Kyle. Its claws were weak; its mouth was broken. Kyle shifted his grip on his bb gun to hold onto the barrel, which was all metal, and bashed the southern grayridge on the snout.

You have learned the active skill Bash.

His first attempt successfully created the skill, and Kyle immediately used it, following his manual strike with a quick, automatic bash.

The southern grayridge couldn’t react fast enough to get out of the way of Kyle’s bashes. Each time it began to think, a heavy blow to its skull caused it to enter a daze.

It finally collapsed, unable to hold itself up any longer. As it did, the bashing also stopped, and the southern grayridge felt hope.

It resigned itself to its fate, but the onslaught halted!

Quests

* Kill a wandering Southern Grayridge. Reward: 500 Credits.

* Discover the abandoned Southern Grayridge den. Reward: 200 Credits.

* Save Laurel Tal from her captors. Reward: 1500 Credits.

Kyle stopped to check his quests. He still had the quest, for which he assumed the beast in front of him to be the southern grayridge in mentioned, which meant either two things: the beast he killed wasn’t a southern grayridge, or it was still alive.

He walked around the southern grayridge’s body and picked up the stone he dropped. He held it in his hand, feeling the heft of it, and walked beside the southern grayridge’s body. He winced, then slammed the sharp edge of the stone into the southern grayridge’s skull, breaking the bone and splattering gore on Kyle’s arm.

Kyle released the stone inside the southern grayridge’s skull and backed away. The beast was dead, he was sure of it. By checking his quests, his confirmed it.

Quests

* Discover the abandoned Southern Grayridge den. Reward: 200 Credits.

* Save Laurel Tal from her captors. Reward: 1500 Credits.

* Bring Laurel Tal to the Tal Tribe. Reward: 100 Credits.

The quest to kill the southern grayridge was gone, and the list of quests moved up. At the bottom of the list, a new quest appeared which seemed to have to follow the quest above it.

Kyle equated it to a questline in a videogame, except he could see the next two quests. At some point, he would have to find the abandoned den of the southern grayridge that attacked him, then find Laurel Tal and save her.

Disregarding the quests for the moment, Kyle walked around the southern grayridge’s corpse and sat against the fallen tree. His whole body had blood on it, but only his hands, arms, and chest were significantly injured. He would need a new set of clothes as soon as the shop opened up.

“Notes,” Kyle spoke, and a writable box of text appeared in front of him. He made a bullet list of things he needed and added clothes. A few second later, he added shoes and a set of sheers.

Kyle was tired, and he opened his list of skills while he rested. They were originally organized in the order he gained them, but Kyle sorted them into Active, Passive, and Auxiliary categories and removed the descriptions. From his point of view, most of the names were self-explanatory.

Skills, Active

* Aim - Level 13.

* Ascend - Level 2.

* Bash - Level 4.

* Cock - Level 14.

* Descend - Level 3.

* Eye-Shot - Level 3.

* Jump - Level 16.

* Piss - Level 0.

* Push - Level 4.

* Shit - Level 0.

* Shoot - Level 13.

* Sit - Level 14.

* Stand - Level 14.

* Thrust - Level 5.

* Track - Level 3.

* Run - Level 12.

* Walk - Level 17.

* Wipe - Level 0.

Kyle’s Shooting skills leveled up to level 9, and Claw Resistance leveled up to level 1. All-in-all, Kyle gained 227 Credits from his skills and 200 from the quest reward, putting him at a total of 497 Credits.

The bloody corpse would need to be dealt with, but Kyle decided to do that another time. He stood up and stretched, then opened his map and walked back to his cave. Tracking the southern grayridge had brought him quite a distance into the forest, and it was only thanks to the map that he found his way back to the cave.

Once at his cave, Kyle turned right to retrieve his bottle of bbs, bottle of water, and the granola bars that he left behind when breaking rocks. He picked them up and returned to his cave but didn’t enter it. He sat against the cliff and sighed, emptied his pockets and leaned his bb gun against the rock wall.

The southern grayridge had hurt him, but it wasn’t life-ending. Half-way through his granola bar, Kyle fell to the side and curled into a fetal position. His adrenaline wore off, and the pain from his wounds assaulted him at full-force.